AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Director

AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Director
AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Director
	The 2025 recipient: Guillermo del Toro
Awarded for	Best Director over 50
Country	United States
Presented by	AARP
First award	Robert Altman for Gosford Park (2001)
Currently held by	Guillermo del Toro for Frankenstein (2025)
Website	https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/

The AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Director is one of the AARP Movies for Grownups Awards presented annually by the AARP since the awards' inception in 2002. The award honors the best director over the age of fifty.^[1] The Best Director Award is one of the seven original trophies issued by AARP the Magazine, along with awards for Best Movie for Grownups, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Foreign Film, Best Documentary, and Best Movie for Grownups Who Refuse to Grow Up.^[2]

Awarded forBest Director over 50

CountryUnited States

Presented byAARP

First awardRobert Altman for Gosford Park (2001)

Quick facts for Best Director, Awarded for ...

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Year	Director(s)	Film	Ref.
2001 (1st)	Robert Altman	Gosford Park	^[3]
	Michael Mann	Ali
	Ridley Scott	Black Hawk Down
	Tony Scott	Spy Game
2002 (2nd)	Roman Polanski	The Pianist	^[4]
	Phillip Noyce	Rabbit-Proof Fence and The Quiet American
	Manoel de Oliveira	I'm Going Home
	Martin Scorsese	Gangs of New York
	Steven Spielberg	Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can
2003 (3rd)	Joel Schumacher	Phone Booth	^[5]
	Clint Eastwood	Mystic River
	Alan Rudolph	The Secret Lives of Dentists
	Ridley Scott	Matchstick Men
	Jim Sheridan	In America
2004 (4th)	Mike Nichols	Closer	^[6]
	Clint Eastwood	Million Dollar Baby
	Taylor Hackford	Ray
	Michael Mann	Collateral
	Martin Scorsese	The Aviator
	Ousmane Sembène	Moolaadé
2005 (5th)	Steven Spielberg	Munich	^[7]
	Woody Allen	Match Point
	Ron Howard	Cinderella Man
	Ang Lee	Brokeback Mountain
	Fernando Meirelles	The Constant Gardener
2006 (6th)	Clint Eastwood	**Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima**	^[8]
	Bill Condon	Dreamgirls
	Stephen Frears	The Queen
	Paul Greengrass	United 93
	Martin Scorsese	The Departed
2007 (7th)	Tony Gilroy	Michael Clayton	^[9]
	Joel and Ethan Coen	No Country for Old Men
	Paul Haggis	In the Valley of Elah
	Mike Nichols	Charlie Wilson's War
	Julian Schnabel	The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
2008 (8th)	Gus Van Sant	Milk	^[10]
	Danny Boyle	Slumdog Millionaire
	Jonathan Demme	Rachel Getting Married
	Ron Howard	Frost/Nixon
	John Patrick Shanley	Doubt
2009 (9th)	Kathryn Bigelow	The Hurt Locker	^[11]
	Lee Daniels	Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
	Clint Eastwood	Invictus
	Nora Ephron	Julie & Julia
	Rob Marshall	Nine
	Nancy Meyers	It's Complicated

Year	Director(s)	Film	Ref.
2010 (10th)	Danny Boyle	127 Hours	^[12]
	Paul Greengrass	Green Zone
	Paul Haggis	The Next Three Days
	Tony Scott	Unstoppable
	John Wells	The Company Men
2011 (11th)	Stephen Daldry	*Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close*	^[13]
	Woody Allen	Midnight in Paris
	George Clooney	The Ides of March
	Cameron Crowe	We Bought a Zoo
	Terrence Malick	The Tree of Life
	Martin Scorsese	Hugo
2012 (12th)	Steven Spielberg	Lincoln	^[14]
	Kathryn Bigelow	Zero Dark Thirty
	Ang Lee	Life of Pi
	David O. Russell	Silver Linings Playbook
	Gus Van Sant	Promised Land
2013 (13th)	Alfonso Cuarón	Gravity	^[15]
	J.C. Chandor	All Is Lost
	Stephen Frears	Philomena
	Paul Greengrass	Captain Phillips
	Nicole Holofcener	Enough Said
2014 (14th)	Richard Linklater	Boyhood	^[16]^[17]
	Clint Eastwood	American Sniper
	Alejandro González Iñárritu	Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
	James Marsh	The Theory of Everything
	Ira Sachs	Love is Strange
2015 (15th)	Ridley Scott	The Martian	^[18]^[19]
	Todd Haynes	Carol
	Alejandro González Iñárritu	The Revenant
	David O. Russell	Joy
	Steven Spielberg	Bridge of Spies
2016 (16th)	Kenneth Lonergan	*Manchester by the Sea*	^[20]
	Clint Eastwood	Sully
	David Mackenzie	Hell or High Water
	Martin Scorsese	Silence
	Denzel Washington	Fences
2017 (17th)	Guillermo del Toro	The Shape of Water	^[21]
	Kenneth Branagh	Murder on the Orient Express
	Reginald Hudlin	Marshall
	Ridley Scott	All the Money in the World
	Steven Spielberg	The Post
2018 (18th)	Spike Lee	BlacKkKlansman	^[22]
	Kenneth Branagh	All is True
	Alfonso Cuaron	Roma
	Peter Farrelly	Green Book
	Mimi Leder	On the Basis of Sex
2019 (19th)	Martin Scorsese	The Irishman	^[23]
	Noah Baumbach	Marriage Story
	Fernando Meirelles	The Two Popes
	Sam Mendes	1917
	Quentin Tarantino	Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Year	Director(s)	Film	Ref.
2020/21 (20th)	Aaron Sorkin	*The Trial of the Chicago 7*	^[24]
	Lee Daniels	The United States vs. Billie Holiday
	Regina King	One Night in Miami...
	Spike Lee	Da 5 Bloods
	George C. Wolfe	Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
2021 (21st)	Jane Campion	*The Power of the Dog*	^[25]^[26]
	Kenneth Branagh	Belfast
	Guillermo del Toro	Nightmare Alley
	Steven Spielberg	West Side Story
	Denis Villeneuve	Dune
2022 (22nd)	Baz Luhrmann	*Elvis*
	James Cameron	Avatar: The Way of Water
	Todd Field	TÁR
	Gina Prince-Bythewood	The Woman King
	Steven Spielberg	The Fabelmans
2023 (23rd)	Christopher Nolan	*Oppenheimer*
	Ben Affleck	Air
	Michael Mann	Ferrari
	Alexander Payne	The Holdovers
	Martin Scorsese	Killers of the Flower Moon
2024 (24th)	Jacques Audiard	*Emilia Pérez*
	Pedro Almodóvar	The Room Next Door
	Edward Berger	Conclave
	James Mangold	A Complete Unknown
	Ridley Scott	Gladiator II
2025 (25th)	Guillermo del Toro	Frankenstein
	Paul Thomas Anderson	One Battle After Another
	Kathryn Bigelow	A House of Dynamite
	Scott Cooper	Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
	Spike Lee	Highest 2 Lowest

AARP Movies for Grownups Award for Best Director

Winners and Nominees

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

Multiple wins

Multiple nominations

See also

References

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